In March 2020 South Africa took the drastic step of shutting everything down to help curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus. This meant that citizens were only allowed to leave home for medical reasons or to purchase groceries. All other forms of economic activity were closed.

Therefore, in order for us to continue to media train clients and assist them with their crisis preparedness, everything needed to go online. In addition, prepping for a virtual interview on camera has its own requirements. For example, if the camera is at the wrong angle or the interviewee has a distracting background behind them, you can easily lose your audience or come across poorly.

This is where we came in. Over the three months of hard lockdown, H+K SA media trained four multi-national clients in the art of ensuring that their spokespeople were able to handle online and totally virtual interviews, be it for a proactive interviews or in a crisis situation.

To do this we set up training sessions via Microsoft Teams, Zoom  or Cisco Webex where we were able to recreate the experience of a TV interview, using recording functions to help with playback and working with TV anchors to ensure we gave clients an authentic experience with robust questioning. 

While we initially thought that pivoting to this kind of training would be temporary, as the pandemic has progressed, virtual interviews have become the norm and in some cases broadcast media anchors are even presenting from their homes. For H+K SA, helping to prepare our clients for this new world remains one of our key priorities.